Chapter IX

TROUBLES BUBBLE; OR, THE SORROWS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

1825–1829.

Parallel between Sidney Smith’s Old Razor and J. Q. Adams’s Term.—How
several Gentlemen, touched by Age, reached in Vain after Honors too
high.—Who they were; and what Acid Grapes the House of Representatives
snatched from them.—Pamphleteering and Privateering.—An Italian
Saying.—Description of a Good Statesman spoiled in the Mould of a
Politician.—An Illustrative Anecdote.—Partisan Scales weighing Public
Interests.—The Weights.—The Depravity of Political Blunders.—History
vs. Party Judgments.

Sidney Smith once said “that he was like an old razor,—always in hot water or in a scrape.” The term of the second Adams had similar agreeable occupation. The water was very hot when this political blade was first thrust into it. Mr. Monroe’s double term was so quiet, dozy, and apparently so long, that several gentlemen, outside of Virginia, felt that they were growing old, and might, unless they improved the chance, easily slip out of it. Besides Mr. Adams, there were, as candidates, General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, William H. Crawford of Georgia, and Henry Clay of Kentucky; among whom General Jackson received the highest popular vote, and Mr. Adams the next. In the House of Representatives, the ballot taken by States gave Mr. Adams 13, General Jackson 7, and Mr. Crawford 4 votes. Each of these was a dragon’s tooth, which was carefully sown, and produced rank growths of sulphur-colored partisans, whose drifting seeds grew into poisonous crops all along the public roads. Pamphleteering became privateering on private reputation. Industrious falsehoods supplied for many years the warp of history.

“_Si non è vero è ben trovato_” was the maxim of ingenious and disingenuous fraud.

Nursed and reared a statesman, Mr. Adams made a very poor politician. He could no more run his ever-cooling intellect and scholarly attainments into the curious moulds of party than he could make Q fit the place of A. Worse far, he had such a small organ for a heart, that it sent no blood to his cold fingers for hand-shaking. He had too much conscience to be popular with office-beggars, and not manners enough to go around in the country at large. He never stirred out of Washington, that he did not tread on some one’s foot.

“James,” said a father to his malapropos son, “you have only two faults; one is, that you are good for nothing before breakfast, and the other is, that you are not a whit better after breakfast.” So said of the unpartisan President his political fathers, the heads of committees; and their opinion outbalanced in the scale the petty weights of general prosperity, peace at home and abroad, a careful, scrupulous economy, that kept the entire expenses of the government below thirteen millions annually, and a steady payment on the national debt of seven and a half millions a year. The friendly blunder of appointing Mr. Clay Secretary of State was a political crime; the retention of those already in office, political unrighteousness; the refusal to appoint clamorous partisans to paying places, exaggerated political depravity. History at last inscribes over the gateway of his term “Arabia Felix,” over the place where popular misconception and partisan disappointment had hastily chiselled “Arabia Petrea.”